Measuring Subjective Wellbeing

for Public Policy:

Recommendations on Measures
Paul Dolan, Richard Layard
and Robert Metcalfe
Special Paper No. 23
March 2011

Report to the ONS, September 2010

Paul Dolan is an Associate of the Wellbeing Programme, Centre for Economic
Performance and Professor of Social Policy, London School of Economics.
Richard Layard is Director of the Wellbeing Programme, Centre for Economic
Performance and Emeritus Professor of Economics, London School of
Economics. Robert Metcalfe is Fitzjames Research Fellow in Economics,
Merton College, University of Oxford.

Published by
Centre for Economic Performance
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
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nor be issued to the public or circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.
Requests for permission to reproduce any article or part of the Working Paper should be sent to
the editor at the above address.
P. Dolan, R. Layard and R. Metcalfe, submitted 2011

Executive summary
The measurement of wellbeing is central to public policy. There are three uses for any
measure: 1) monitoring progress; 2) informing policy design; and 3) policy appraisal.

There has been increasing interest in the UK and around the world in using measures of
subjective wellbeing (SWB) at each of these levels. There is much less clarity about precisely
what measures of SWB should be used.

We distinguish between three broad types of SWB measure: 1) evaluation (global

assessments); 2) experience (feelings over short periods of time); and 3) eudemonic (reports
of purpose and meaning, and worthwhile things in life).

The table below summarises our recommended measures for each policy purpose (see Table
1 in the report for suggested wording). We have three main recommendations:
1.

Routine collection of columns 1 and 2

2.

All government surveys should collect column 1 as a matter of course

3.

Policy appraisal should include more detailed measures

Monitoring progress

Informing policy design

Policy appraisal

Evaluation
measures

- Life satisfaction

- Life satisfaction
- Domain satisfactions e.g.:
relationships; health; work;
finances; area; time; children

- Life satisfaction
- Domain satisfactions
- Detailed sub-domains
- Satisfaction with services

Experience
measures

- Happiness yesterday
- Worried yesterday

Eudemonic - Worthwhile things in life

measures

- Happiness and worry

- Affect associated with
particular activities
- Intrusive thoughts
relevant to the context
- Worthwhile things in life
- Reward from activities

By placing these questions into large surveys, the UK Government will be in a strong
international position to monitor national and local SWB, inform the design of public policy
and appraise policy interventions in terms of their effects on SWB.

Introduction
1.

There is increasing interest in the measurement and use of subjective wellbeing

(SWB) for policy purposes. The highly-cited Stiglitz Commission (2009), for example, states
that Research has shown that it is possible to collect meaningful and reliable data on
subjective as well as objective well-being. Subjective well-being encompasses different
aspects (cognitive evaluations of ones life, happiness, satisfaction, positive emotions such as
joy and pride, and negative emotions such as pain and worry): each of them should be
measured separately to derive a more comprehensive appreciation of peoples lives... [SWB]
should be included in larger-scale surveys undertaken by official statistical offices.

2.

In the UK, the Coalition Governments Budget 2010 Report stated that the

Government is committed to developing broader indicators of well-being and sustainability,

with work currently underway to review how the Stiglitz (Commission) should affect the
sustainability and well-being indicators collected by Defra, and with the ONS and the
Cabinet Office leading work on taking forward the reports agenda across the UK.

3.

This paper and its motivation derives from the recent Office for National Statistics

(ONS) working paper that called for a follow-up report to recommend which measures of
SWB should be used (Waldron, 2010). We agree with Waldron when he states that there
may be a role for ONS and the GSS to support the delivery of subjective wellbeing data on a
national scale. Along with other researchers, we have previously attempted to show how
SWB data might be used to inform policy (Layard, 2005; Dolan and White, 2007) but here
we focus on precisely how SWB should be measured and which measures are fit for specific
policy purposes.

4.

In what follows, Section 2 outlines the criteria for any account of wellbeing. Section 3

discusses the main accounts of wellbeing and where they are being used, and it highlights
some differences between them. Section 4 outlines the three main measures of SWB and
where they have been used. Section 5 discusses some of the methodological issues with the
measures. Section 6 makes recommendations.

1. Wellbeing Measures for Public Policy

5.

In order for any account of wellbeing to be useful in policy, it must satisfy three

general conditions. It must be:

1. theoretically rigorous
2. policy relevant
3. empirically robust

6.

By theoretically rigorous, we mean that the account of wellbeing is grounded in an

accepted philosophical theory. By policy relevant, we mean that the account of wellbeing
must be politically and socially acceptable, and also well understood in policy circles. By
empirically rigorous, we mean that the account of wellbeing can be measured in a
quantitative way that suggests that it is reliable and valid as an account of wellbeing. These
criteria are similar to those used by Griffin (1986).

7.

Ultimately, any account of wellbeing will be used for a specific policy purpose. We

consider each of the three main policy purposes:

1. Monitoring progress
2. Informing policy design
3. Policy appraisal

8.

Monitoring requires a frequent measure of wellbeing to determine fluctuations over

time. Monitoring SWB could be important to ensure that other changes that affect society do
not reduce overall wellbeing. Similarities can be seen here with the current use of GDP,
which is not used directly to inform policy but is monitored carefully and sudden drops
would have to be examined carefully and specific policies may then be developed to ensure it
rises again.

9.

Informing policy design requires us to measure wellbeing in different populations that

may be affected by policy. For example, Friedli and Parsonage (2007) cite SWB research as a
primary reason for building a case for mental health promotion. More specifically, SWB
could be used to make a strong case for unemployment programmes given the significant hit
in SWB associated with any period of unemployment (Clark et al, 2004; Clark, 2010).

10.

Policy appraisal requires detailed measurement of wellbeing to show the costs and

benefits of different allocation decisions. Using SWB data as a yardstick could allow for the
ranking of options across very different policy domains (Donovan and Halpern, 2002; Dolan
and White, 2007). Expected gains in SWB could be computed for different policy areas and
this information could be used to decide which forms of spending will lead to the largest
increases in SWB (Dolan and Metcalfe, 2008).

2. Accounts of Wellbeing
11.

There are three accounts of wellbeing (Parfit, 1984; Sumner, 1996) that meet the three

conditions and that could, in principle, apply at each of the monitoring, informing and
appraising levels:
1. Objective lists
2. Preference satisfaction
3. Mental states (or SWB)

2.1. Objective lists and preference satisfaction

12.

Objective list accounts of wellbeing are based on assumptions about basic human

needs and rights. In one of the best-known accounts of this approach, Sen (1999) argues that
the satisfaction of these needs help provide people with the capabilities to flourish as human
beings. In simple terms, people can live well and flourish only if they first have enough food
to eat, are free from persecution, have a security net to fall back on, and so on. Thus, the aim
of policy should be to provide the conditions whereby people are able to enrich their
capabilities set.

13.

Despite many unresolved questions about what should be on the list and how to

weight the items on it, many governments and organisations have specific policies to target
many of these needs (such as access to education and healthcare), suggesting that objective
list accounts are an integral part of monitoring wellbeing. The account has provided guidance
on policies designed to increase literacy rates and to improve health outcomes. It has been
less useful in policy appraisal.

14.

The preference satisfaction account is closely associated with the economists account

of wellbeing (Dolan and Peasgood, 2008). At the simplest level, what is best for someone is
what would best fulfil all of his desires (Parfit, 1984: 494). All else equal, more income or
GDP allows us to satisfy more of our preferences and so, at the monitoring level, GDP is
often used as a proxy for wellbeing. According to standard theory, more choice allows us to
satisfy more of our preferences and this idea has informed the design of policies in health and
education. Preference satisfaction has also been used widely in policy appraisal. Cost-benefit
analysis (CBA) values benefits according to peoples willingness to pay (HM Treasury,
2003).

15.

Fundamental doubts remain about the preference satisfaction account. We are often

unable to predict the impact of future states of the world (Wilson and Gilbert, 2003), we
frequently act against our better judgment (Strack and Deutsch, 2004), and we are
influenced by irrelevant factors of choice (Kahneman et al, 1999) as well as by a host of other
behavioural phenomena (DellaVigna, 2009; Dolan et al, 2010).

16.

Whilst there are some clear correlations between preference satisfaction and objective

lists e.g. GDP in the UK has been correlated with increases in life expectancy (Crafts, 2005),
there are some important discrepancies. Many other indicators of social success show a trend
opposite to that of GDP e.g. increasing pollution and rising obesity (ONS, 2000, 2007). We
need to more carefully consider, even at a very general monitoring level, whether wellbeing
has, in fact, gone up or down. This requires us to also consider the third account of wellbeing.

2.2. Subjective wellbeing

17.

SWB is a relative newcomer in terms of its relevance politically and its robustness

empirically. Its theoretical rigour extends back to Bentham (1789) who provided an account
of wellbeing that is based on pleasure and pain, and which provided the background for
utilitarianism. Generally, SWB is measured by simply asking people about their happiness. In
this sense, it shares the democratic aspect of preference satisfaction, in that it allows people to
decide how good their life is going for them, without someone else deciding their wellbeing
(Graham, 2010).

18.

The differences between measures of wellbeing can be very striking for the same

individuals. Peasgood (2008) used the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to examine
objective wellbeing, preference satisfaction, and SWB within the same individuals. She
shows that there is a dramatic difference between the accounts for those with children, people
who commute long distances, those with a degree, and between men and women.

19.

SWB is beginning to be used to monitor progress and to inform policy; or, rather, ill

being, in terms of depression rates and in the provision of cognitive behavioural therapy
(Layard, 2006). More is now needed on the positive side of the wellbeing coin. Policy
appraisal using SWB has interested academics (Dolan and Kahneman, 2008) and it is now
interesting policymakers too (HM Treasury, 2008). More is now required. We need to
measure all three wellbeing accounts, separately (see Dolan et al, 2006). We also need to
measure SWB in different ways.

3. Measuring SWB
20.

There have been many attempts to classify the different ways in which in SWB can be

measured for policy purposes (Kahneman and Riis, 2005; Dolan et al, 2006, Waldron, 2010).
We distinguish between three broad categories of measure:
1. Evaluation
2. Experience
3. Eudemonic

3.1. Evaluation measures

21.

SWB is measured as an evaluation when people are asked to provide global

assessments of their life or domains of life, such as satisfaction with life overall, health, job
etc. Economists have been interested in using life satisfaction for some time (see Frey and
Stutzer, 2002; van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2005). The main reason why this measure
has been used most often in policy-relevant research is because of its prevalence in
international and national surveys, including the BHPS (Waldron, 2010), and because of its
comprehensibility and appeal to policymakers (Donovan and Halpern, 2002).

22.

Life satisfaction has been shown to be correlated with income (both absolute and

relative), employment status, marital status, health, personal characteristics (age, gender, and
personality), and major life events (see Dolan et al, 2008 for a recent review). The main
correlations have been found to be broadly similar across studies. Life satisfaction has also
been shown to differ across countries in ways that can also be explained by differences in
freedoms, social capital and trust (Halpern, 2010).

23.

The use of various domain satisfaction questions has become prominent since the

analysis of job satisfaction in labour economics (Freeman, 1978; Clark and Oswald, 1996).
Life satisfaction can be seen as an aggregate of various domains (van Praag et al, 2003;
Bradford and Dolan, 2010). The BHPS has a list of domain satisfactions (health, income,
house/flat, partner, job, social life, amount of leisure time, use of leisure time), with partner
satisfaction and social life satisfaction having the biggest correlation with life satisfaction
(Peasgood, 2008). There are some intuitively clear omissions in the BHPS, such as
satisfaction with your own mental wellbeing, and satisfaction with your childrens wellbeing.

24.

General happiness has also been used instead of life satisfaction. General happiness

question have been asked in many of the international surveys (Waldron, 2010). Using
happiness or life satisfaction yields very similar results, in terms of the impact of key
variables. The Gallup World Poll has recently used Cantrils (1965) ladder of life which
asks respondents to evaluate their current life on a scale from 0 (worst possible life) to 10
(best possible life). There are some differences between life satisfaction and the ladder of life,
notably in relation to income (Helliwell, 2008).

25.

Evaluation can also use questions about general affect. For instance, the Affect

Balance Scale (Bradburn, 1969), and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (Watson et al,
1988) elicit responses to general statements about affect. The General Health Questionnaire
(GHQ) can also be classified as an evaluation of SWB. Huppert and Whittington (2003) show
that the positive and negative scales are somewhat independent of one another and so we
need to be cautious when considering the overall figures (and also ask about both positive
and negative affect see below).

3.2. Experience measures

26.

Experience is very closely associated with a pure mental state account of wellbeing,

which depends entirely upon feelings held by the individual during some stated period of
time. This is the Benthamite view of wellbeing, where pleasure and pain are the only things
that are good or bad for anyone, and what makes these things good and bad respectively is
their pleasurableness and painfulness (Crisp, 2006). This may be colloquially thought of as
the amount of affect felt in any moment (e.g. happy, worried, sad, anxious, excited, etc.).
Well-being is therefore conceived as the average balance of pleasure (or enjoyment) over
pain, measured over the relevant period. There is some evidence, however, that positive and
negative affect are somewhat independent of one another and should therefore be measured
separately (Diener and Emmons, 1984).

27.

Many existing measures tap into experienced wellbeing, such as the Ecological

Momentary Assessment (EMA) (Stone et al, 1999) and the Day Reconstruction Method
(DRM) (Kahneman et al, 2004). EMA is based on reports of wellbeing at specific (often
randomly chosen) points in time and also includes other approaches, such as the recording of
events, and explicitly includes self-reports of ones own behaviours and physiological
measures (Stone and Shiffman, 2002).

28.

The DRM has been used to approximate to the more expensive EMA and to avoid

potentially non-random missing observations, which arise due to the invasive nature of EMA
(Csikszentmihalyi and Hunter, 2003). The DRM asks people to write a diary of the main
episodes of the previous day and recall the type and intensity of feelings experienced during
each event (Kahneman et al, 2004). Kahneman and Krueger (2006) provide evidence that the
results from the DRM provide a good approximation for those from experience sampling.

29.

To generate a measure of pleasurableness from the EMA or DRM, a summary of the

moment is generated from the responses to types of feelings and their intensity. There are a
number of ways to calculate this summary measure and no clear theoretical guidance about
which one is best. One possibility is to take the difference between the average positive
feelings (or the most intense positive) and the average negative (or the most intense negative)
(Kahneman et al, 2004). The proportion of time in which the most intense negative affect
outweighs the most intense positive may also be generated, referred to by Kahneman and
7

Kruger (2006) as a U-index. The U-index clearly combines positive and negative affect but
is calculated by measuring each separately.

30.

The EMA and DRM have been widely studied in purposeful samples but there has

been less work in population samples (although see White and Dolan, 2009). For large
population samples, respondents could be asked for their experiences at a random time
yesterday. With a large enough sample, a picture could be constructed about yesterday from
thousands of observations, without having to use the full EMA or DRM for each respondent.
This is very similar to the Princeton Affect Time Use Survey (PATS) (Krueger and Stone,
2008). Simpler still is to ask people about feelings relating to the whole day. The U.S. Gallup
World and Daily Polls have done this.

31.

Experiences of wellbeing are also affected by "mind wanderings", whereby our

attention drifts between current activities and concerns about other things. Research suggests
that these can be quite frequent, occurring in up to 30% of randomly sampled moments
during an average day (Smallwood and Schooler, 2006). When these mind-wanderings
repeatedly return to the same issues, they are labelled "intrusive thoughts" and they often
have a negative effect on our experiences (Watkins, 2008). Dolan (2010) reports how
intrusive thoughts can potentially explain part of the difference between health preferences
and experiences.

32.

Evaluations and experience-based measures may sometimes produce similar results

(Blanchflower, 2009) but often they do not. For life satisfaction, it appears that
unemployment is very bad, marriage is pretty good at least to start with, children have no
effect, retirement is pretty good at least to start with, but there is considerable heterogeneity
(Calvo et al, 2007). DRM data on affect have generally found weak associations between
SWB and these events (Kahneman et al, 2004; Knabe et al, 2010). Work on the Gallup Poll
by Diener et al (2010) and Kahneman and Deaton (2010) shows that income is more highly
correlated with ladder of life responses than with feelings, which are themselves more highly
correlated with health.

3.3. Eudemonic measures

33.

Eudemonic theories conceive of us as having underlying psychological needs, such

as meaning, autonomy, control and connectedness (Ryff, 1989), which contribute towards
wellbeing independently of any pleasure they may bring (Hurka, 1993). These accounts draw
from Aristotles eudemonia as the state that all fully rational people would strive towards.
Eudemonic wellbeing can be seen as part of an objective list in the sense that meaning etc.
are externally defined but it comes under SWB once measurement is made operational. We
each report on how much meaning our lives have, in an evaluative sense (Ryff and Keyes,
1995), and so we classify such responses under SWB but with quotations to highlight the
blurred boundaries.

34.

In a comparison of eudemonic measures and evaluations of life satisfaction and

happiness, Ryff and Keyes (1995) found that self-acceptance and environmental mastery
were associated with evaluations but that positive relations with others, purpose in life,
personal growth, and autonomy were less well correlated. There has, however, not been a
thorough comparison of the three measures of SWB (evaluation, experience and eudemonic)
due to no large scale longitudinal or repeated cross-sectional survey containing all the
measures.

35.

More recently, White and Dolan (2009) have measured the worthwhileness (reward)

associated with activities using the DRM. They find some discrepancies between those
activities that people find pleasurable as compared to rewarding. For example, time spent
with children is relatively more rewarding than pleasurable and time spent watching
television is relatively more pleasurable than rewarding.

4. Methodological Issues
36.

Before recommending any specific measures, we need to consider some key

methodological issues. These are not fundamental flaws but rather issues to address when
moving forwards with any measure of wellbeing. The three key issues are:
1. Salience

2. Scaling
3. Selection

4.1. Salience

37.

Any question focuses attention on something and we must be clear about where we

want respondents attention to be directed, and where it might in fact be directed. We should
like to have attention focussed on those things that will matter to the respondent when they
are experiencing their lives and when they are not thinking about an answer to our surveys
(Dolan and Kahneman, 2008). It must also be recognised that the mere act of asking a SWB
question might affect experiences (Wilson and Schooler, 1991; Wilson et al, 1993).

38.

Responses will be influenced by salient cues, such as the previous question (Schwarz

et al, 1987), and perhaps also by the organisation carrying out the survey (there has been little
research on the importance of the messenger in research into SWB). The general consensus,
however, is that there are stable and reliable patterns in SWB, even over the course of many
years (Fujita and Diener, 2005).

39.

The time frame of assessment is not usually made explicit in the evaluative and

eudemonic measures but it could be. Currently, life satisfaction questions, for example,
are usually phrased as nowadays or recently, with little evidence suggesting that either of
these alter the distribution of the data. The time frame might not be important for monitoring
SWB over time but it matters much more when the purpose is to use SWB for informing
policy design, and especially in appraising policy. The experience measures usually do
mention a specific time period. For the EMA, it is the wellbeing at that particular moment;
for the DRM, time is explicit in that episodes are weighted by duration.

40.

Issues of measurement error can be seen to be related to salience, since different

measures may make different aspects of life more salient at any one time, which increases
measurement error. Layard et al (2008) found that the average of life satisfaction and
happiness responses gave greater explanatory power than either one on its own. It is possible
that domain satisfaction measures may have good reliability because they are relatively
straightforward judgements that can be aggregated to generate overall satisfaction (Peasgood,
2008; Cummins, 2000).
10

4.2. Scaling

41.

In order to make meaningful comparisons over time and across people, we need to

understand how interpretations of the scales may change over time. Frick et al (2006) show
that respondents in the German Socio-Economic Panel have a tendency to move away from
the endpoints over time. The relationship between earlier and later responses can be seen as
an issue of scaling and salience: if later responses are influenced by earlier ones, then the
earlier ones are salient at the time of the later assessment (as shown in the study by Dolan and
Metcalfe, 2010).

42.

It is possible that the endpoints on a scale change when circumstances change and

when key life events happen and it is important that we conduct more focussed empirical
research into this issue. It is not at all clear, though, whether this actually matters for policy
purposes since a 7 out of ten before and after having children, for example, is still, in fact, 7
out of ten.

43.

What would matter much more in interpersonal comparisons is if different population

groups used the scales differently. The Defra (2009) survey has shown that life satisfaction
ratings are positively associated with the things, like income, we would expect them to be
except at the top of the scale where those rating their life satisfaction as ten out of ten are
older, have less income and less education than those whose life satisfaction is nine out of
ten. This is consistent with the view that life satisfaction ratings in part reflect an
endorsement of ones life (Sumner, 1996). This issue warrants further research and reinforces
the need for multiple measures of SWB (e.g. in relation to domains of life as well as life
overall).

4.3. Selection

44.

Selection effects are crucial for all three purposes for any measure of wellbeing. Who

selects into being in a survey with SWB measures is important to establishing whether the
effects of any factor associated with SWB are generalisable or specific to the sample
population. Attrition of certain types of people in different types of SWB surveys is also
important in generalising treatment effects. Watson and Wooden (2004) show that people

11

with lower life satisfaction are less likely to be involved in longitudinal surveys. We do not
know enough about these effects for the three measures of SWB.

45.

Moreover, people self-select into particular circumstances that make it difficult for us

to say anything meaningful about how those circumstances would affect other people. Take
the effects of volunteering as an example. There is generally a positive association between
volunteering and SWB but it is possible that those choosing to volunteer are those most likely
to benefit from it and those with greater SWB may be those most likely to volunteer in the
first place. Part of any correlation will then be picking up the causality from SWB to
volunteering.

46.

For monitoring purposes, issues of causality are not that important since we want to

know the headline figures. The same could be said about informing policy design. It could
well be that unhappy people select into caring roles, for example, but policymakers might
still want to target the SWB of carers. For appraising policy, however, causality is perhaps
the key issue. We need to know how resources allocated to a project directly impact the SWB
of the beneficiaries. Telling the chicken from the egg in wellbeing research is crucial for
effective policymaking.

5. Recommendations
47.

By using the three SWB measures across the UK, we will be able to address the

methodological issues and provide more empirically robust data. Table 1 provides our
recommended measures for each policy purpose. We strongly recommend:
1. Routine collection of columns 1 and 2
2. All government surveys should collect column 1 as a matter of course
3. Policy appraisal should include more detailed (e.g. time use) measures

48.

In the spirit of the Stiglitz et al, we suggest that the evaluative, experience and

eudemonic components of SWB should be measured separately. Policymakers may wish to

aggregate across the four questions in column one for the purposes of monitoring progress

12

but it is vital that the measures under each account of wellbeing are not confused with each
other.

49.

The time has certainly come for regular measurement of SWB in the largest standard

government surveys. By aggregating over years, data should be available at local authority
level and reliable quarterly data should be produced at the national level, especially if the
survey involved overlapping panels.

50.

There are many potential ONS surveys that could include the measures in Table 1,

such as the Integrated Household Survey (IHS) (see Waldron, 2010 for details of the
candidate surveys). The ONS has a fantastic opportunity to measure SWB in ways that will
enhance the monitoring of progress, and better inform the design and appraisal of policy in
the UK.

13

Table 1: Recommended measures of SWB1

Evaluation
measures

Monitoring progress

Informing policy design

Policy appraisal

Life satisfaction on a 0-10

Life satisfaction plus domain

Life satisfaction plus

scale, where 0 is not

satisfactions (0-10) e.g.

satisfied at all, and 10 is

How satisfied are you with:

completely satisfied e.g.

your personal relationships;

Then sub-domains4

1. Overall, how satisfied

your physical health;

e.g. different aspects of

are you with your life

your mental wellbeing;

the area where you live

nowadays?

domain satisfactions

your work situation;

your financial situation;

Plus satisfaction with

the area where you live;

services, such as GP,

the time you have to do things

hospital or local

you like doing;

Council5

the wellbeing of your children (if

you have any)?

Experience

Affect over a short period

Happiness yesterday plus other

measures

from 0 to 10, where 0 is

adjectives of affect on the same

not at all and 10 is

scale as the monitoring question6.7

Then detailed account of

completely e.g.

e.g. Overall, how much energy

affect associated with

2. Overall, how happy did

did you have yesterday?

particular activities8

you feel yesterday?

Overall, how worried did you feel

3. Overall, how anxious

did you feel yesterday?

Happiness and worry

yesterday?

Plus intrusive thoughts

Overall, how stressed did you feel

e.g. money worries in

yesterday?

the financial domain

Overall, how relaxed did you feel

over specified time9

yesterday?

Eudemonic

Worthwhileness on a 0-

Overall worthwhileness

measures

10 scale, where 0 is not at

of things in life

all worthwhile and 10 is

completely worthwhile

Then worthwhileness

4. Overall, to what extent

(purpose and meaning)

do you feel that the

associated with specific

things you do in your life

activities11

are worthwhile?10

14

Notes on Table 1
1. Reviews of the different measures can be found in Dolan et al (2006) and Waldron
(2010).
2. This is similar to the question used in the BHPS, GSOEP and World Values Survey
(WVS), the Latinobarometer and the recent Defra surveys. The GSOEP, WVS and Defra
surveys use a 0-10 scale. Some of these surveys use a scale running from completely
dissatisfied to completely satisfied, and they do not make clear where on the scale
dissatisfied stops and satisfied starts. This makes it difficult to interpret the scores.
Moreover, we seek consistency across the different measures of SWB, at least at the level
of monitoring, and the experience measures generally calibrate the scales from not at
all.
3. These are largely taken from the BHPS domains. The BHPS does not ask about
satisfaction with mental wellbeing and with the wellbeing of your children. Both of these
domains are potentially important determinants of wellbeing (as distinct, in the case of
children, from simply knowing whether someone has children or not). It is important to
ask about general mental wellbeing and not mental health, since the latter is most likely to
only pick up the negative side of the domain.
4. See Van Praag and Ferrer-i-Carbonell (2004) for considering of the sub-domains that go
into job satisfaction.
5. e.g. see the UK Local Authority Surveys, conducted by IpsosMORI (2004).
6. Happy is a widely used adjective for positive affect and appears in the DRM and in the
Gallup-Healthways data. Anxious is widely used as an indicator of poor mental
wellbeing, and appears in the EQ-5D, a widely used generic measure of health status.
Other adjectives, like worried and stressed, could be used instead.
7. Some of these adjectives can be taken from the Gallup World Poll questions. We would
also recommend that data using well established measures of mental health (e.g. the
PHQ9 and GAD7 which are being used to evaluate the impact of cognitive behavioural
therapies) be collected periodically.
8. See Kahneman et al (2004) and Krueger and Stone (2008).
9. See Smallword and Schooler (2006) and Dolan (2010).
10. The eudemonic measures are traditionally quite demanding to complete (Dolan et al,
2006). There are no generally used questions about purpose and meaning in life, so we
have based our recommendations on a suggestion by Felicia Huppert.
11. See White and Dolan (2009).
15

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